Women Who Know Their Full Value Follow 5 Rules That Average People Find Awkward
Dean Drobot | Canva Too many women confuse feeling empowered with acting entitled or emotionally unavailable. In reality, empowered dating is all about embracing and exposing your most uncomfortable, vulnerable, and tender feelings, and then connecting with others who want a similar depth of emotional connection. Then, and only then, can deep love grow and a strong partnership based on equality flourish.
Empowered dating is about being brave enough to sit in the anxious, yucky, totally out of your comfort zone feelings associated with letting down your guard.
So how do you do that? The key is to allow yourself to feel and share emotional vulnerability while having a sense of ownership of your emotions. Owning your feelings will let you feel more comfortable sharing your true self and will help your partner feel safer in acknowledging those feelings.
Women who know their full value follow 5 rules that average people find awkward
1. Be vulnerable, but never susceptible
The difference between being a soft, sensitive woman a man would want to snatch up and love forever, and being a needy, over-emotional, dramatic woman who makes men run away has everything to do with susceptibility.
- Are you susceptible to losing yourself in a man?
- Are you susceptible to feeling overwhelmed with neediness and other insecurities?
- Do you allow your feelings for a man to make you so weak for him that you compromise your self-respect and dignity just to connect?
2. Be grounded, but not guarded
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If you feel you are susceptible to your more needy side, it's time you find your grounding. I call it making a conscious effort to "sit on your hands” and not reach out to men. Sharing and exposing your true feelings, needs, desires, and dislikes. should be done from a grounded place, from a place of feeling like you aren't uncontained, needy, and out of control emotionally.
A lot of women confuse being grounded with being guarded. Being grounded actually allows you to not be guarded, but instead to be vulnerable and open. Once you feel yourself shutting down or putting on a friendly, fun "act" for a man to hide your true self, you are losing your grounding and becoming guarded as a result.
3. Be comfortable feeling uncomfortable
This goes back to what I said in the introduction. When you participate in empowered dating, you live outside of your comfort zone. You invite men to see the true you while also placing yourself in situations where you risk being honest instead of playing games, being fragile instead of putting on a fake show of strong character, being uncertain instead of trying to gain control over him, the relationship, and yourself, etc.
4. Be sweet, but not sugar-coated
Be honest with men. Be direct and up-front about how you feel. If a guy gets on his phone during a date and it bothers you, speak up. Be sweet, polite, and feel empowered about your ability to be heard. Don't be afraid to voice your feelings. "I feel annoyed when a guy gets on his phone on a date. It makes me feel unimportant."
5. Be silly, but never foolish
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Having strong personal boundaries allows you to trust yourself, and it melts away "the edge" a lot of women have in the beginning stages of a dating relationship. If you know what you won't tolerate from a man (no matter how handsome, rich, funny, or smart he is), you end up feeling a lot more relaxed, silly, and playful. Once you feel like you can't trust yourself to walk away from a guy who hits all the right buttons in your heart, you start acting uptight and are always waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Be playful with all the men you meet. See every guy as practice for the big game. Start getting more comfortable with male attention and with utilizing the massive power of your energy. Practicing will show you it's OK to want and seek out male attention, and there isn't some boundary-breaking thing you have to give them in exchange for that attention.
So many of us get uncomfortable with male attention because we associate it with negative things, like feeling guilty that we teased a man. We feel like we have to break a boundary and give something back to men in exchange for their attention, like reassuring them when they get angry.
You don't owe a man anything just because you flirt with him. Don't let a man's poor sense of self make you feel like you have to be responsible for his experience. If some guy gets pushy, angry, rude, or judgmental, then that's his problem. Be free to be yourself and express your sensuality and beauty on a date. Have innocent intentions. Don't be overt or play power games with men to watch them squirm for your attention, but have fun. Only a foolish woman would put a man's dating experience in front of her own.
Kristina Marchant is a writer and author with a BA in psychology from Barnard College at Columbia University. She is also a relationship coach who advises women on men and healthy relationship skills.
